AoS 2

[Skabnoze]

Yeah, I saw that announcement.  But so far there is little info about exactly what it is.

They have been handling Age of Sigmar very well I think since it launched.  I was one of the main complainers and haters around when the game launched, and I still claim that the game did not launch in the best state.  But that said, they have done a great job of iterating new ideas into battletomes, implementing and iterating the General's Handbook, and adding fun campaigns and other expansion rules as they go.  And despite how much I would like to see some of the older factions get reworked into real Age of Sigmar factions - I really like every new faction they have put into the game so far (aside from Stormcast - which I think are OK, but not nearly as interesting as the rest of the stuff they have done).  The designers deserve to be commended for steering this new iteration of the game into a really good place.

So I have confidence that they are probably doing something with the magic supplement like I mentioned (or maybe something better).

[RuneBrush]

2 hours ago, BURF1 said:

Magic is too strong as it is, thank you very much. With Maggotkin and LoN magic has eclipsed shooting as the single most unbalanced and overpowered aspect of the game.

I'm not exactly sure I'd have said it was the single most unbalanced aspect of the game, I'll accept that some spells can be overpowered but to say that Magic is the most overpowered part of the game I don't think is true.  

[Redmanphill]

16 hours ago, RuneBrush said:

I'm not exactly sure I'd have said it was the single most unbalanced aspect of the game, I'll accept that some spells can be overpowered but to say that Magic is the most overpowered part of the game I don't think is true.  

The ability to unbind spells is far more rare than the ability to cast them and while in general that is fine the power of certain spells can be very strong. Consider armies that have no ability or very limited ability to unbind. They can be very much at the mercy of the magic phase.

[Sleboda]

I've always been intrigued by the idea that players expect to be able to counter spells but not counter an arrow or a sword.

In other words, where are the complaints about a lack of "Dispel Charge" scroll?

It's my opinion that the ability to unbind spells doesn't really even need to exist at all.  You pay for magic just like you pay for shooting or fighting, so why do you get to negate one and not the others?

[Redmanphill]

I like to be able to respond to them. A sword I can fight with my own accepting I’ll take losses but also cause them. Arrows I can combat with speed or my own shooting. Magic though means unbinding and while I’d accept that my opponent should get spells off and damage me with them or boost his forces it’s the sheer level of spells that can be cast freely that causes the problem.

I don’t like to fight against one sided forces, it’s not fun for me at least. Magic presents the possibility to have a one-sided force. Hence why it should have a decent way to respond to it.

[Skabnoze]

2 hours ago, Sleboda said:

I've always been intrigued by the idea that players expect to be able to counter spells but not counter an arrow or a sword.

In other words, where are the complaints about a lack of "Dispel Charge" scroll?

It's my opinion that the ability to unbind spells doesn't really even need to exist at all.  You pay for magic just like you pay for shooting or fighting, so why do you get to negate one and not the others?

Personally, I do prefer systems that have opposed attack/defense systems that allow someone to choose to allocate resources to defense if they want.  I absolutely adore the Malifaux rules for that.  But, I am ok with the more passive system in the major Games Workshop games due to their scale.  The Malifaux dueling system works so well in part because the game plays on such a small scale.  When you start getting giant units of troops then I am perfectly fine with the abstractions used for the combat system in Age of Sigmar.

If they wanted to change the Age of Sigmar system to something that allowed more control on the player to interact defensively then they would probably need to change to a system that treats units a bit more abstract such as something like Star Wars Legion - where units have attack and defense dice pools and the models are mainly markers used to represent unit strength.

As for Magic, historically Warhammer Fantasy has used a cast/dispel system for 2 reasons.  I don't know about the original magic system, but when I started playing back in the early 90s the magic system used a shared deck of power cards.  Both players drew a certain number of cards, and those cards either granted you power to use to cast a spell or they were counter cards such as dispel, or reflection, etc.  The amount of cards you got was based on the power level of the wizards on each side, and then both players conducted a wizards duel using the cards.  The player's whose turn was currently active would use their cards to try  to cast the spells they had and their opponent would use their cards to try to counter.  The idea was meant to represent the few wizards on the board directly facing off in a duel of magic and counter-magic.  It was meant to be a fun little mini-game rather than a specific balance tool - and it worked for that.  The magic system eventually changed to a power dice pool system and finally to the simple cast roll that we have now. 

The other purpose that the cast/dispel system has been used for has been to attempt to balance out the potency of much of the spells of the game.  For most editions many of the spells were much more potent than a lot of what exists in Age of Sigmar currently.  There were spells that instantly killed a model, or that decimated entire units.  When spells were that strong they needed to be tough to cast and people needed some sort of ability to defend against them.  It might be something that is not quite as needed in the current game, but I do like the wizard-duel theme that it brings.

[Sleboda]

I remember those days (I started with 3rd edition). I like the duelling wizards idea. It's just that I've always been annoyed when ppl would complain that magic was too good, even though they could auto stop it with a scroll, but never could see that a charge from Chaos Knights could be just as devastating and there was no auto stop for that.

With AoS at release, magic felt just about perfect to me. I am concerned about what is coming.

[LLV]

43 minutes ago, Skabnoze said:

 

As for Magic, historically Warhammer Fantasy has used a cast/dispel system for 2 reasons.  I don't know about the original magic system, but when I started playing back in the early 90s the magic system used a shared deck of power cards.  Both players drew a certain number of cards, and those cards either granted you power to use to cast a spell or they were counter cards such as dispel, or reflection, etc.  The amount of cards you got was based on the power level of the wizards on each side, and then both players conducted a wizards duel using the cards.  The player's whose turn was currently active would use their cards to try  to cast the spells they had and their opponent would use their cards to try to counter.  The idea was meant to represent the few wizards on the board directly facing off in a duel of magic and counter-magic.  It was meant to be a fun little mini-game rather than a specific balance tool - and it worked for that.  The magic system eventually changed to a power dice pool system and finally to the simple cast roll that we have now. 

 

Warhammer- Battle Magic. I have heard that something similar is returning to AoS and the new black sun we saw is a part of this. Not sure on if the mechanics will be card based but since it was described to me as similar to the old battle magic system I’m thinking it may be! 

[Captain Marius]

I kinda like magic as it is now, kinda in line with prayers and command abilities. I play a fair few factions with no wizards so i'm a bit wary of it getting boosted to the extent we could see the return of the magic phase... On the other hand magic is literally integral to the concept of the Mortal Realms so its benefit of the doubt time!

[HorticulusTGA]

11 minutes ago, Captain Marius said:

I kinda like magic as it is now, kinda in line with prayers and command abilities. I play a fair few factions with no wizards so i'm a bit wary of it getting boosted to the extent we could see the return of the magic phase... On the other hand magic is literally integral to the concept of the Mortal Realms so its benefit of the doubt time!

As @LLV , I guess a magical supplement can bring something to every army (so army without "dedicated" spells lore can still have a variety of spells to choose from), in the form a of "Realmlore" : i.e. at the start of the battle you choose a Realm, and all wizard automatically can choose between a number of spells between the - say - eight spells form that lore ; maybe you have to roll against you opponent to see who can pick which, etc. See for example the magic rules in Malign Portents for Shyish, or the 8 Times of War rules for the Realms in the GHB 2017.

Because indeed, magic is integral to the Realms themselves and is easily accessible there !

But I hope it won't change too much the current way of casting and dispelling spells. Maybe just adding a "Peril of the warp" kind of effect for the stronger spells introduced, like a "If you cast a spell with a value of 8+, a double 1 makes your wizard take 1 mortal wound" kind of rule. 

[Redmanphill]

I think that bringing back miscasts would be a great balancing factor for magic.

[BURF1]

1 hour ago, Sleboda said:

I remember those days (I started with 3rd edition). I like the duelling wizards idea. It's just that I've always been annoyed when ppl would complain that magic was too good, even though they could auto stop it with a scroll, but never could see that a charge from Chaos Knights could be just as devastating and there was no auto stop for that.

With AoS at release, magic felt just about perfect to me. I am concerned about what is coming.

The thing is, magic in sigmar is almost 100% mortal wounds, crippling debuffs, and enormous buffs and the armies that use magic well have no real fear of failure. So if you play an army that is 1. Low model count 2. has no magic defense 3. has no mortal wound defense, you're basically boned against any of the magic using armies.

[BURF1]

50 minutes ago, HorticulusTGA said:

As @LLV , I guess a magical supplement can bring something to every army (so army without "dedicated" spells lore can still have a variety of spells to choose from), in the form a of "Realmlore" : i.e. at the start of the battle you choose a Realm, and all wizard automatically can choose between a number of spells between the - say - eight spells form that lore ; maybe you have to roll against you opponent to see who can pick which, etc. See for example the magic rules in Malign Portents for Shyish, or the 8 Times of War rules for the Realms in the GHB 2017.

Because indeed, magic is integral to the Realms themselves and is easily accessible there !

But I hope it won't change too much the current way of casting and dispelling spells. Maybe just adding a "Peril of the warp" kind of effect for the stronger spells introduced, like a "If you cast a spell with a value of 8+, a double 1 makes your wizard take 1 mortal wound" kind of rule. 

What lore is it going to bring to Khorne, or Stormcasts? And what benefit is that going to give armies that have very limited spell slots and mandatory spells like DoK? Or armies that are just not very good at casting spells anyway like...destruction.

This is why I hate the idea of 'universal spell lores' it's a rich get richer scenario for Tzeentch, mixed chaos, Maggotkin, and Legions of Nagash.

[HorticulusTGA]

1 hour ago, BURF1 said:

What lore is it going to bring to Khorne, or Stormcasts? And what benefit is that going to give armies that have very limited spell slots and mandatory spells like DoK? Or armies that are just not very good at casting spells anyway like...destruction.

This is why I hate the idea of 'universal spell lores' it's a rich get richer scenario for Tzeentch, mixed chaos, Maggotkin, and Legions of Nagash.

Well... In magical matter, Khorne is the exception that proves the rule (like the Dwarfs were in WFB, i.e. they have unbinding abilities anyway), Stormcast are just about to get Wizard-like units, and new magic rules could also mean new unbinding powers, or another kind of power entirely (like Command abilities or Prophecy points) that help buff or debuff magic in general - again, see the mechanism in Malign Portents.

It also could gives the "wizard" rules to normal Characters, enable to cast spell / unbind without being a Wizard  but through the General for example, the possibilities are endless.

Anyway I can't see why you would "hate" such a system, because for armies that have almost nothing in terms of magical power, it would give them at least something, and for the others strong ones you cited, just gave them something they already have (which could lead - for them - to useless redundancy). 

And something is always better than nothing. 

[Charles]

Magic as it is written in the AoSrules sheet is excellent.

The issues come with the unbalanced spells added in later to create power creep and items like the Balewind. I think one of the best solutions is to increase the range of dispells, offensive spells will always out range dispells due to the Balewind and the buff spells will almost never be cast within range of something that can dispell.

[Carnelian]

Hooray for miscasts! They are fun so I hope they return.

[Jamopower]

I agree that the dispelling should be easier. It's very rare (and risky) to have a wizard close enough and visible to dispell. At least it shouldn't require a line of sight. 

[Mordeus]

A better dispel system and a miscast or overcast rule would make me happy.

[Arkiham]

On 4/6/2018 at 7:40 PM, BURF1 said:

Magic is too strong as it is, thank you very much. With Maggotkin and LoN magic has eclipsed shooting as the single most unbalanced and overpowered aspect of the game.

i dunno how you come to that tbh.

magic is far more restrictive than anything else. it actually requires planning.  

 

" oh i wanna magic that hero over there to death, whats the range? 19.5" oh ok ill move then magic. dam cant . ok ill move now then wait till my next turn maybe i can win the roll off ? oh i lost, great ill do it when its my turn......great its my turn, my wizard is now basically dead as they moved then charged me so ive this hero phase to kill their hero or im dead as im a super squishy wizard and they're a hard as nails hero and my only real chance is mortal wounds now. 2 of them. ok here goes.... i rolled a...7 ! it casts! oh....dispelled....great ! "

compared to

"ah look its that hero i want dead! whats the range? 20"? i can see that staff of his ! ok ill move then shoot.... i move forward 4". i shoot with everything. it dies " 

 

yes. very much over powered magic. 

 

1 wizard crazy is strong - nagash 

1 spell is crazy good - the gaunt summoners, {as of the balewind. even then thats as most people still refuse to actually consider a solution for it. ( like how they plan for basically everything else but this just needs to be banned ) }

[AverageBoss]

Agreed with the above. Since magic happen before movement, you can just choose to not sit in spell range, or only move into range when you have a counter ready. The only way your opponent can reliably tag you with magic in 9/10 instances, is if you move into range, or they get a double turn (which might be going away apparently).